Here's the views of some guests from abroad at the Limmud conference published over the past few days:

"The weather was awful, and the food not much better- but everything else about this annual British-Jewish mega-event was fabulous” “Judy Maltz of Ha’aretz

“Too often Jewish commitment is translated as simply writing a check, and these days even that behavior is sadly diminishing. What if we learned from Limmud, and expected more of each other — more of our time, our brains, our creativity and commitment? The best of Jewish life isn’t necessarily free. The young leaders of Limmud taught me that.” Jane Eisner of The Jewish Daily Forward

The Gateshead Rav, Rabbi Shraga Faivel Zimmerman, has returned to the question of Limmud, in an article in last week’s edition of the Orthodox weekly, the Jewish Tribune.

Rabbi Zimmerman, you may remember, was one of the signatories of an open letter in October which condemned Orthodox participation in the cross-communal conference following the decision of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis to go there.

The release of the letter brought a furious riposte from Jewish Leadership Council chairman Mick Davis and other community who denounced it as “a shocking failure of leadership”.

West Bromwich Albion striker Nicolas Anelka’s antisemitic goal “celebration” has plunged English football into its third race row in as many years.

The Frenchman’s “quenelle” salute – described by his country’s sports minister Valérie Fourneyron as an incitement to racial hatred, and by journalist Philippe Auclair as “cretinous” – brings to football stadiums in this country a controversy that is spiralling out of control across the Channel.

The rise of the antisemitic signal – part Nazi salute, part “up yours” gesture – has been so rapid that French authorities want to ban its creator, antisemitic “comedian” Dieudonné from performing in public.

There are some people in the Jewish world who have written off European Jewry as a lost cause. But not everyone regards us as basically only a pool for potential aliyah.

Barbara Lerner Spectre, the founding director of a Stockholm-based institute of higher Jewish education, called Paideia, believes that a new kind of Jew is emerging on the continent and that they have something to contribute to Jewry as a whole.

Modern Jewish identity has largely been broken into three types, she explained at a Limmud session: religious, national or cultural – cultural meaning a “Woody Allen Jew”.